Saturday, January 26, 2013

Today was a cold, gray day. Normally I don't take landscape pictures when the sky is that whitish, gray color, and texture-less...... you know the gray that wants to show up in my pictures as a blown sky. I love nice pretty blue skies with big fluffy clouds or even dark gray, stormy looking skies..... but the dull whitish gray skies ............. well I am not to excited about shooting those, even with hdr it is hard to get much life into the sky.

But today as I stood looking out the kitchen window washing dishes I realized I don't see those days as unattractive. No maybe they aren't my favorite color days but I still find beauty in them. I love to watch the layers of fog lift in the mountains and see the raindrops hanging on the branches.

So I braved the cold and fine, misty, rain and went out with my camera to challenge myself and see if I could capture some of the beauty I could see, even on a dull, cold, gray day. After all..... life has it's gray days too, yet I find I am always much happier if I look for, focus on, and embrace the beauty in the gray :)

Thursday, January 24, 2013

I was traveling and thoroughly enjoyed the magnificent display of colors as the sun went down in the west. I enjoyed all the shades of light it cast across the landscape, from hues of red and orange to purplish skies as the red mixed with the blue sky.... it's really amazing to watch a sunset.... really watch all the changes that take place in a few short minutes. I really wanted to just stop my trip and shoot everything bathed in the beautiful light but since I didn't have time for that I watched for a place to get a quick snap to capture the beautiful colors. Finally I found a long driveway I could pull over in with some trees I could silhouette in my picture.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

I was absolutely thrilled to discover that the below zero (it is 1f now) temperatures overnight put frosties on my storm door. I got my camera all ready opened up the inside door and got one good shot. I was so disappointed to realize it only took 1 minute and 25 seconds for all my beautiful frosties to melt and pour down the glass as little drops of water. This of course happened as soon as they were exposed to the heat from inside my living room. But I got my "frosties" shot.... Yay!!

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Well I went back to shoot the tractor again and I couldn't really get the background to go out of focus. I used my wide angle lens and it's maximum aperture is f 4.0 I shot at 17 mm so if I had zoomed out to 10 instead and got as close as I could to the tractor it might have helped a little bit. I suppose as long as the tractor is so close to the building I will just have to be happy with the dof :) It isn't that it is bad, it is ok, I just had a different vision in mind.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Well my new focus in the kitchen is sourdough bread. I finally got a sourdough starter and have been learning to make sourdough bread. Oh my at first there was so much info to digest it was overwhelming but now that I am a little more sure of what I am doing..... I love it!

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Red Berries
I often see these berries around the edge of the river, usually tangled in some vines. They don't grow on a vine but more of a bush, but usually grow with vines around them. They are very red and just pop against their brown surroundings. I have no idea what they are. Evidently the birds don't eat them though, for they are visible all winter. A bright spot in the brown for sure, a welcome site in a long winter. Now if I could just catch them all coated in snow :)

Sunday, January 6, 2013

I saw this pretty, old, red tractor as DH and I were taking someone home from church. I thought how neat that the red tractor was so conveniently parked in front of a nice green, contrasting building for a backdrop :)

Now I want to go back and shoot wide angle and get closer to the tractor to see if I can make it stand out from the building a little..... have the building more out of focus in other words. I am at f2.8 (I thought that would accomplish throwing the background out of focus) and the building is still in focus probably because there wasn't a lot of distance between the tractor and building.